An estimated five million Americans participate in non-credit college and university classes annually. The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) does not require the reporting of non-credit student postsecondary enrollment, which means there is a lack of data about non-credit higher education. This qualitative case study provides…

Noncredit community college programs provide an important route for workforce development. They offer affordable and accessible short-term training options for individuals seeking access to middle-skills jobs. Absent the burdens of accreditation standards, they can respond nimbly to local labor market needs. However, they can also be varied and…

The purpose of the qualitative phenomenological study was to understand and describe the lived experiences of adult English language learners previously enrolled in English as a Second Language Noncredit (ESLN) courses who were persisting in credit coursework through the lens of Bean and Metzner's (1985) nontraditional student attrition model. The…

This study explored the experiences of Latina immigrant parent students enrolled in a noncredit English as a Second Language (ESL) program at a California community college. It sought to uncover how these students navigate the processes and services of community colleges to support their academic success while also examining how they draw upon…

Under the authority of the P-20 Longitudinal Education Data System Act (105 ILCS 13/1 et seq.) (the "LDS Act"), the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) is the State Education Authority responsible for collecting and maintaining enrollment, completion, and student characteristic information on community college students. The data…

As the wages of high school graduates plummet, postsecondary education and training has become critical to obtaining a living-wage job. Obtaining an associate's degree or higher has the greatest potential to produce long-lasting increases in individual earnings. However, recent studies have shown that shorter-term credentials, which may take only…

This chapter discusses an often neglected aspect of the community college mission: noncredit courses that address local service area needs.

Education Code section 76002 requires the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office to prepare and submit a report each year on the number of special part-time and special full-time full-time equivalent students (FTES) claimed by each community college district for the preceding academic year in each of the following class categories: (1)…

Representing approximately two in five community college students, noncredit education is an important but understudied segment of the higher education population. In an effort to help open the "black box" of noncredit education in community colleges, the present study uses an established noncredit course typology (occupational training,…

A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures…

The problem investigated in this study was the low completion rates of students in mandated developmental education courses at a local community college in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine factors that may contribute to the persistence of community college students who have completed mandated…

The conventional educational system is experiencing substantial challenges, preparing post K-12 students for future professions. These challenges include a limited talent pool of skilled and technically proficient employees. Tracking educational and trade skill proficiency has been a norm in educational settings and has adapted over time to…

Salsa is a popular form of partnered social dance with a distinct Latinx identity. In the qualitative literature, the experience of involvement in Salsa has been explored within a community-based setting in a cultural and health promotion context. How students experience engaging with Salsa, as a social dance when instruction is provided within a…

Constructivism holds that learners construct knowledge when they make sense of the world. It provides the basis for the movement from teacher-centered towards student-centered learning in entrepreneurship, which is accelerating. Yet, research into using constructivism in the entrepreneurship classroom of community colleges in the USA is seriously…

Purpose: At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, an annual short-term, research abroad non-credit program was created in 2012 as a core component of the undergraduate research initiative that achieves learning outcomes in a meaningful way. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach: In order to describe, and analyze the…